Roles of Abductive Reasoning and Prior Belief in Children’s Generation of Hypotheses about Pendulum Motion

Pendulum Motion: A Case Study in How History and Philosophy Can Contribute to Science Education

“…Very young children, as shown in Japan, Korea and numerous other countries, can profitably and enjoyably engage with pendulum activities (Sumida 2004;Kwon et al 2006). 27 It is not accidental that Jean Piaget used the pendulum for his investigation of the progressive development of children's scientific reasoning ability, especially their identification and control of variables (Bond 2004).…”

“…The sophistication of pendulum activities and their relation with other areas and topics in science can be enhanced with progression through school; obvious connections with mathematics, technology and engineering can be made, and even connections with chemistry (De Berg 2006). The full range of process skills (data collection and representation, hypothesis generation), methodological skills (generating hypotheses, evaluating these against evidence, theory testing and so on) and model construction can all be cultivated using pendulum classes (Kwon et al 2006;Stafford 2004;Zachos 2004). 26 The 320pp draft is available free from the National Academies Press website; it is titled A Framework for K-12 Science Education.…”

Learning-Related Changes in Adolescents’ Neural Networks During Hypothesis-Generating and Hypothesis-Understanding Training

“…Therefore, the term 'hypothesis-generating' in this study refers to the abductive thinking process of formulating a set of propositions proposed as a tentative causal explanation for an observed scientific situation. This abductive hypothesis generation process presumably involves the reasoning procedures of exploring, combining, comparing, and selecting possible alternatives Kwon et al 2000Kwon et al , 2003Kwon et al 2006). Also, abductive hypothesis generation is regarded a learning strategy or thinking style in which one, individually, explores the cause (i.e.…”

Students' Abductive Reasoning according to Scientific and Historical Knowledge

“…Additionally, most students had similar experiences (experienced situations) and failed to link them to hypothetical explicans. Similarly, Kwon et al [23] studied the roles of prior belief and abductive reasoning skills by administering a test about pendulum motion to 5th grade students. Their results suggested that failure to generate hypotheses was related to abductive reasoning ability, rather than simple lack of prior belief.…”

“…Many studies [22][23][24][25][26] have focused on the presence or absence of abduction, the suitability of the generated hypotheses, or changes in grades in abductive reasoning-based classes. Nonetheless, how the presence or type of prior knowledge affects the overall process of abductive reasoning is little known.…”